The Branch Will Not Break: Poems

TWO HANGOVERS

TWO HANGOVERS NUMBER ONE I slouch in bed. Beyond the streaked trees of my window, All groves are bare. Locusts and poplars change to unmarried women Sorting slate from anthracite Between railroad ties: The yellow-bearded winter of the depression Is still alive somewhere, an old man Counting his collection of bottle caps In a tarpaper shack under the cold trees Of my grave. I still feel half drunk, And all those old women beyond my window Are hunching toward the graveyard. Drunk, mumbling Hungarian, The sun staggers in, And his big stupid face pitches Into the stove. For two hours I have been dreaming Of green butterflies searching for diamonds In coal seams; And children chasing each other for a game Through the hills of fresh graves. But the sun has come home drunk from the sea, 34 And a sparrow outside Sings of the Ilanna Coal Co. and the dead moon. The filaments of cold light bulbs tremble In music like delicate birds. Ah, turn it off. NUMBER Two: i TRYTO WAKEN ANDGREET THE WORLD ONCE AGAIN In a pine tree, A few yards away from my window sill, A brilliant blue jay is springing up and down, up and down, On a branch. I laugh, as I see him abandon himself To entire delight, for he knows as well as I do That the branch will not break. 35 ...